In an alternate universe, Reneé Rapp might’ve rose to fame after starring in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and not Olivia Rodrigo.
No, seriously, the Mean Girls actress just revealed that she auditioned for the Disney+ series before ultimately being rejected during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter posted on Thursday, February 29.
“I started auditioning for America’s Got Talent and American Idol whenever they’d come anywhere close to Charlotte and Huntersville,” the North Carolina native revealed to the outlet. “I auditioned for, what’s the fucking [name]? High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”
Could you imagine if Reneé starred in the Disney+ series? Undoubtedly, she would be a fan-favorite — and maybe she was even up for Olivia’s character, the possibilities are endless!
Well, HSMTMTS or not, the singer-songwriter says that all of her rejections ultimately made her who she is today.
“I couldn’t get there. I wanted to so bad,” she told the outlet. “Because I was just obsessed and I was like, ‘I need to sing. I have to do this.’ I just never went anywhere, which in hindsight is slay. It is so funny. I think that it made me so resilient. And so I’m spunky and scrappy. I am like, ‘I will make some shit work.'”
And she did make it work! Instead of HSMTMTS, Reneé booked Regina George in Broadway’s Mean Girls musical, before nabbing a role in HBO’s Sex Lives of College Girls. Following that, she reprised her role of Regina in the 2024 movie musical adaptation of Mean Girls.
“I auditioned for College Girls in the middle of the pandemic when nothing was going on. I really wanted to do music, and my agents were telling me to try TV,” Reneé recalled to Elite Daily in December 2022. “I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ I thought that any job that I do will get me some sort of a platform so that I can hopefully do music. Mean Girls was my first big job. It’s such a big part of my career and something that I love so much. I always thought it would be so cool to do a movie. So then when they asked me, I was like, ‘ F–k yeah.’”
Outside of acting, Reneé released her debut album Snow Angel in August 2023.
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